Russian Railways and Gazprom to construct the Northern Latitudinal Railway

JSC Russian Railways and PJSC Gazprom have signed an agreement to jointly implement the investment project for the construction of the Northern Latitudinal Railway (NLR).

(Credit: Gazprom)

Signed by the President of JSC Russian Railways, Oleg Belozerov, and Chairman of the Board of PJSC Gazprom, Alexey Miller, this agreement is to connect the Severnaya and Sverdlovskaya railroads along the Obskaya-Salekhard-Nadym-Pangody-Novy Urengoy-Korotchaevo route.

The line is 707km long in total and aims to export cargo from the fields of the northern regions of Western Siberia and reduce the length of transport routes to north western ports.

The Northern Latitudinal Railway will be implemented by private investors working under a concession scheme with the main participants (Russian Railways, Gazprom, and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug) financing the facilities of its existing railway infrastructure. The construction of new facilities will be performed by the concessionaire.

Gazprom will create a special subsidiary company that will ensure the completion of the construction and commissioning of its own railway line: Nadym-Pangody, while the Russian Federation will act as a concessor, with the concessionaire being a special project company named SPC-Concessionaire; a subsidiary of JSC Russian Railways.

Oleg Belozerov and Alexey Miller (credit: Gazprom)

SPC-Concessionaire will provide financing, construction and operation of the Obskaya-Salekhard-Nadym line, particularly the railway section of the bridge across the Ob River, the new Salekhard-Nadym railway section, and the railway section of the bridge across the Nadym River.

Russian Railways will reconstruct the adjacent Konosh-Kotlas-Chum-Labytnangi sections of the Northern Railway, including the Ob station, and the Pangody-Novy Urengoy-Korotchaevo railway line of the Sverdlovsk Railway.

In turn, the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug administration will act as an investor in the construction of the automobile part of the bridge across the Ob and provide the necessary project documentation.

The region will also provide the land plots needed for the construction of the highway to the federal government and access to water bodies and forest areas for construction workers, as well as provide benefits on property tax.

This construction is planned to be carried out from 2018 to 2022.